NVIDIA Demo - Cascades (GeForce 8800)

Explore a fantastic new world of endless rock formations and exhilirating detail. Watch majestic waterfalls cascade down the rock, while buzzing swarms of dragonfly-like inhabitants dive and play. Zoom in close to examine the vibrant surface detail, or move the camera up or down to explore the rocks infinite outcroppings, cliffs, and caves.
Sit back and watch as the camera follows the water down as it flows over the rock, falls through the air, and crashes back onto the rock below in a cloud of mist. Or, take control and interactively place your own waterfalls on the terrain to create a beautiful personalized dreamscape just the way you want it.

FEATURES:

Microsoft DirectX 10: Every aspect of the Cascades demo demonstrates next-generation features enabled by DirectX 10, including the generation of content, dynamic particle systems, and the high quality rendering of the scene.

Procedural Geometry Creation: Rock structures are not only rendered, but also constructed by the GeForce 8800. This permits the user to move up or down forever, with the GPU continuously streaming out colossal chunks of rock in a wide variety of random shapes.

Dynamic Particle Physics: The GeForce 8800s geometry shaders perform all the physics calculations for the water, allowing the waterfalls to collide with the rock surface and to form rivers flowing around the features of the rock. Water particles are generated, propagated, and retired on the GPU, leaving the CPU free to perform other tasks.

Displacement Mapping: Improved displacement mapping techniques use a simple height map in a complex pixel shader to display detailed cracks and bumps that are able to occlude each other, resulting in an extremely high level of realism on the rock surface.